There are a range of betting and lottery products in the market. For example, there are pure pool betting products, such as the Pick 6 horse racing product in the United States and the Scoop 6 racing product (among others) in the United Kingdom. There are also sports betting products such as football/soccer individual games and/or pool wagering products. Pick 6 and Scoop 6 provides a six leg jackpot type bet that may also include a bonus pool and consolation prizes. The product type is relatively successful and provides players with a chance to win a large sum by betting on six races on a given race day. Similar multiple leg pool wagering is allowed for other types of racing events and multiple sports events.
In the United Kingdom, there also presently exists a free to play game offered by Skybet, the ‘Super 6’ whereby players are allowed to make just one set of football/soccer correct score selections for a guaranteed payout. The product also has some similarities to the traditional football pools product but is different in that it is not predicting draws and only six selections are necessary. Many countries have similar pool products where betters are asked to select winners in six or seven horse or dog races and can win a share of a large pool. In the United States, numerous states have lotteries where players select for example six numbers and purchase a lottery ticket for a specific drawing. There is also a “Mega Millions” game in which several states participate in a pooled jackpot. The correct selection of all six numbers allows the ticket bearer to claim all or a portion of the pooled jackpot, depending on the number of winning tickets.
In the last few years betting on football/soccer has overtaken betting on races, especially within the UK. The traditional football/soccer pools products in the United Kingdom offer a large payout if the player can select a large number of matches that result in a draw—particularly a score draw. Within football/soccer betting correct score betting is the second most popular market after the central Home/Draw/Away (“H/D/A”) markets. A prominent United Kingdom based betting and gaming company recently reported that 84% of its retail football/soccer bets were coupon based accumulators. Almost 90% of those are on four-fold and above. A four-told is four selections, so 90% of the bets are on four selections and more by comparison for online betting, twice as many bets are singles, and only 55% are four-fold and above. The company went on to report £113 million in football/soccer revenue, the Company is believed to have 12% market share indicating that around £800 million annually is wagered by football/soccer betters, and based on a blended rate of 10% margin, between low margin match odds and higher margin multiple odds, it is estimated that the market is £7 billion for soccer wagering on a yearly basis.
Within this market segment, there is a need for new products to generate and maintain interest. The present invention is directed to a new betting product developed initially to apply to the most globally bet upon sport in the world, football/soccer and specifically United Kingdom premiership football/soccer. The concept, however, has more widespread applications and potential appeal, and thus it may be applied to other types of sporting events as well as being expanded to lotteries, and other multi-leg/multi-events/multi-outcome or divisible games.